1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a system for determining the speed and/or timing of an object.
2. Description of the Related Art
The remarkable, often astonishing, physical skills and feats of great athletes draw millions of people every day to follow sports that range from the power of football to the grace of figure skating, from the speed of ice hockey to the precision of golf. Sports fans are captivated by the abilities of a basketball player to soar to the rafters, of a baseball pitcher to overwhelm the best hitters in the world, of a batter to hit home runs, of a runner to explode down the track, etc. In televising these events, broadcasters have deployed a varied repertoire of technologies--ranging from slow-motion replay to lipstick-sized cameras mounted on helmets--to highlight for viewers these extraordinary talents. Not only are fans intrigued and excited by the efforts of athletes, their comparative abilities become topics of endless debate at water coolers, in sports bars, on the Internet, etc.
One piece of information that has never been readily and reliably available to fans of sports like baseball is the speed that a batter swings a bat. Such information will not only create a statistic that reflects a critical athletic skill, but will also provide announcers with information that will enhance their analysis of the game. Subtle variations in different players' swings, now verifiable, may explain batting success. This information will be of tremendous interest to baseball fans, and to date there have been no successful attempts to provide such information during the telecast of a game.
There has been an attempt to measure and report bat speed in the past. However, this prior art system required significant amounts of human intervention and utilized too much time to arrive at a speed estimate such that the speed was reported significantly after the event to be of maximum interest to a viewer. Furthermore, the system was not been proven to be sufficiently accurate. The particular system included digitizing multiple frames of a video of a bat swing and estimating the distance of movement of the bat in between frames. This information was used to estimate the speed of the bat. Because of the shortcomings described above, the prior art system could not automatically and reliably determine bat speed in a timely manner.
Another piece of information that has not been readily available to baseball fans is the speed of a ball at the beginning of the pitch, at the end of a pitch and/or after it has been hit. Prior art systems measure the speed of a pitch, but cannot guarantee that the measured speed corresponds to the beginning of the pitch, or the end of the pitch. Such information will provide insight into the success of certain pitchers and batters. This information will be of tremendous interest to baseball fans, and to date there have been no successful attempts to provide such information during the telecast of a game. Bat speed and ball speed will quickly join other popular statistics like running speed and throwing distance in adding to viewers' appreciation of an athletic event. Fans of other sports that involve moving objects are also interested in the speeds of the various moving objects.
Therefore, a system is needed that can determine the speed of an object at desired times with sufficient accuracy to be of interest to a viewer of an event.